


Le Prisonnier Inconnu

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Series: Les Punitions de Toulon [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Blackmail/Sexual Coercion, Bondage, Celibacy Kink, Chastity Device/Cock Cages, Choking, Cock & Ball Torture, Cudgels, Dirty Bad Wrong, Double Penetration, Fucked Raw, Gangbang, Gorbeau House, M/M, Multi, Nipple Torture, Obedience, Orgasm Denial, Paris Era, Possessive Behaviour, Punishment, Punishment For Justice, Service Submission, Sexy Toulon, Shame in Sexual Desires, Spit As Lube, Touch-Starved, Unwelcome Arousal, Wrecked Asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-18 20:59:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10625031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: One should always begin by arresting the victims.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellamason](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellamason/gifts).



The window is open; the rope ladder, unguarded. 

Jean Valjean does not hesitate.

 _Over the sill. Down the ladder._ The long drop into the night — and once again, he is free.

The alley is deserted. Javert's men have all crowded into Jondrette's garret to join in the arrest.

His head swims; he is unsteady from blood loss. But there is no time to lose. Grasping his coat around him, Valjean starts to run. 

The Boulevard d'Ivry is too open. Instead, Valjean plunges into the Rue du Petit-Banquier. As he flees, he prays that the night will mask the frantic clamour of his footfalls and beating heart. 

  
  
  
 

 

Valjean has learnt in the bagne to close his mind to suffering; in the convent he has learnt to deny his flesh. The lacerations on his thighs do not hamper his rapid strides across the Rue des Vignes. Even the throbbing pain of his torn, abused hole is easy to ignore in favour of escape.

It had been less easy to ignore the pain in the confines of the reeking garret, when he was in the custody of Jondrette's gang. 

The room had been murky, lit by the fireplace and a single candle. It was difficult to make out the faces of his captors. Two of them wore paper masks, while the other three had blackened themselves like chimney-builders. 

In the stifling darkness, set upon by greedy hands all grasping for the same thing, he felt himself back in the confines of Toulon, where punishment was expected, warranted, might even be just.

Beside the fireplace stood a pallet: a discarded hospital bed of some kind, elevated on four coarse wooden legs and roughly hewn. It took five of them to drag him over to it. He was forced to his knees on the floor at the head of the pallet and bound securely; each leg was pinioned with a short length of rope to the two legs of the bed, his chest bowed the mattress, and his arms fastened behind him.

The man binding his wrists muttered, "Let's see how the bourgeois likes to be on the business end for once!" 

He finished his knots and patted Valjean on the shoulder. "Be good to us, monsieur, and later we will treat your girl gently, you hear?"

The threat to Cosette filled Valjean with so much horror that he stopped struggling. The man behind him grunted his approval. A brief discussion ensued amongst the others involving the drawing of lots; the import of this became clear when they took hold of him again, ripping down his trousers, and taking turns to set upon him. 

“Look how well the old man spreads himself! You’d think he was a whore, or a bagnard,” the first man said, chuckling.

“Not nearly enough,” muttered the man who had taken up position behind Valjean, prodding at him with a dry finger. There was a hawking sound, and then the man fetched spittle upon his arse, in order to ease the passage, before forcing his way in.

It did not ease the way for Valjean: the pain was extreme. But he knew God would preserve his soul if not his body, and besides, he would endure any temporal harm to ensure Cosette's safety. 

He had to believe his efforts to preserve Cosette’s welfare would succeed; to that end, he had given the Jondrette woman a false address. He had also caught a glimpse of the Jondrettes' neighbour through the door and recognised him as the young man who had previously hung about Cosette at the Luxembourg. God worked in mysterious ways; Valjean had to believe the boy's admiration of his daughter would translate into some action on her behalf.

As for him, he had endured far worse in Toulon, where prisoners had lost all rights to their bodies, and where he had as a young man surrendered his manhood to the state and the guards who enforced its laws. For nineteen years he had suffered the bagne’s repeated discipline, his body forfeit to an ancient regime which imposed submissive service upon all criminals under the guise of rehabilitation.

These men of Jondrette’s gang were unaware of his past. They believed him to be a bourgeois of rank, accustomed to wielding privileges of sex and dominance that were barred to the undeserving rank-and-file, and to law-breakers incapable of self-mastery. Little did they realise that Valjean himself had been born to the gutter, had himself been subject to the same unrelenting authority of the bagne.

Born to the gutter and broken in the bagne, Valjean was unbowed by their petty usage, having suffered greater injustice and far greater punishment.

However, gradually, he became aware of his own body’s betrayal, in a manner that could only bring him shame. 

Ten years had passed for Valjean in the convent of Petit-Picpus, spent on his knees in a very different way to the nineteen previous years in Toulon. For ten years, under God's watchful eye, no hand had touched him with desire, not even his own, and he had come to realise that the ancient laws prohibiting criminals from taking their pleasure were justifiable for someone like him. 

In prayer within the quiet walls of Petit-Picpus, he had learned that chastity was needful, and could indeed be its own reward. 

But now, with these lawless men thrusting themselves upon him, breaching his kneeling body one and then two at a time, his starved and sinless flesh finally roused once more to pleasure.

The long-haired man in the mask had come forward. Not content to use Valjean’s hole like the others, he settled himself upon the pallet and pulled Valjean’s head into his lap. 

Valjean started praying. He thrust away memories of guards who had demanded this service of him in the bagne, of other long-haired men who had used his mouth in this fashion, and obediently swallowed down the large, leaking prick.

He heard the others teasing. “Hey, Brujon, you giving yourself fancy airs now?” one of them cried; “Bastard, take your turn like the rest of us!” shouted another, and then yet another man's hand took hold the back of Valjean's blouse, ripping it half away. That man then seized Valjean’s hips and forced his prick brutally upon Valjean from behind.

The doubled violation made Valjean groan, choking around the girth of the one they called Brujon. He struggled against his bonds, the second man panting hotly into his ear, sweat-slick body pressed against him, the excruciating drag of a huge cock inside his abraded passage. The new difficulty in catching his breath made his prayers falter and his vision darken around its edges.

As if from far away, he heard the jeering cry. "Look, the old fellow can still get it up!" 

It took a moment before he understood what they were saying. To his humiliation, he realised that it was true. Submitting to such once-familiar service — even unwillingly, with strangers seizing possession of both ends of his body — had awakened his flesh to a shame he thought long buried upon Toulon's far-off shores.

“Who knew, Babet, your cock can raise the dead,” came the blasphemous remark; Valjean recognised Jondrette’s voice, that wily man he had once known as Thénardier. 

Babet panted, “Since you love it so much, you old buck, let me see you take more of it,” and rammed himself so viciously upon Valjean that he could not help but choke again. Then something hard was set across Valjean's throat, cutting off his breath entirely.

It was a cudgel, and Babet wielded it with the same relentless cruelty as he wielded his prick. Valjean struggled for air, bright spots clouding thickly before his eyes. The room swam in and out of focus, the world slipping away from him against his will.

Clinging to consciousness, his vision filled with indistinct smears of light, Valjean saw once again another cudgel wielded by another hand, and a relentless cruelty that had been made immeasurably worse by the kindness in the bagne that had preceded it.

Even the shame of his arousal was easier to bear than this vision of the man who had withheld from collaring him, the only man whose collar he would have consented to wear.

"Don't kill him, you fool," he heard Thénardier say harshly, and Valjean opened his eyes to find himself sprawled face down upon the pallet. 

He drew in great gulps of fetid air. Brujon had withdrawn, grumbling, and someone was telling Babet that he was taking too long to enjoy their victim and should make way for someone else. 

Babet redoubled his efforts; thankfully, this time Valjean's flesh remained sinless and still, as he had learned in Toulon, in Petit-Picpus.

While Babet was finishing at last, grunting, his teeth fastened to the meat of Valjean's shoulder, a tall, thin man who had been named Claquesous hastened to take a turn, trying to elbow the other aside in order to take his place between Valjean’s thighs. Dizzily, Valjean wondered if these men were so depraved that they would not stint to be both inside him at the same time — and abruptly, with a massive rend that could not have failed to draw blood, they were.

This time, God was merciful to him, and the world slid entirely away. 

After a long moment, he came to his senses to find only one of them yet upon him. Nevertheless, the damage had been done, for he still felt as if he was being cleft in two, and his thighs dripped slowly with something that was neither spit nor spend.

The blood did not stop Claquesous: either the man took enjoyment from another’s injury, which was unlawful under the bagne’s rules of just punishment, or he wished to prolong his use of bourgeois privilege. He was exhausting himself at last when the Thénardier woman returned. 

If Valjean had believed he would receive mercy from that quarter, he was mistaken. 

"The address is false!” she shrieked to her husband, who had seated himself at the table beside the brazier, ignoring the disarray of the gang and their prisoner. “Nobody’s at No. 17. It's nothing but a big carriage gate! No Monsieur Fabre at the Rue Saint-Dominique! And after all that racing and fee to the coachman and all. I spoke to both the porter and the portress, and they know nothing about him!” 

She glared about her. “And God knows why, but the brat from next door was following us! He ran away when he saw we'd spotted him. Gueulemer went after him and didn’t return, and then I came back here."

This drew general consternation. The ruffians drew on their trousers and found their boots and crowded around their master and his wife with their queries. Grimly, Valjean seized his one chance, with the hidden coin he had brought from the bagne, and upon which, by God’s providence, he had not yet loosened his grip. 

He had by and large succeeded in his efforts when Thénardier wheeled upon him. "Did the boy raise the alarm for you? Was that why you played me false, you old fool? What did you expect to gain?"

"To gain time," Valjean said, and rose victoriously to his feet. 

He pulled his torn clothes together and shook off his bonds as if they were lighter than air.

A step toward the fireplace. A weapon seized to hand. 

Thénardier, the female Thénardier and the gangsters all stared at him open-mouthed as he brandished the red-hot chisel from the brazier over his head as an angel’s fiery sword.

For a moment, Valjean could feel nothing save deadly, triumphant rage. A wounded beast, punished for years and tortured for hours, cannot help but lash out in violence. 

But Valjean was no beast, despite the teachings of the bagne; when the moment of weakness had passed, he knew what was required of him. 

He said, "You are wretches, but my life is not worth the trouble of defending it."

Valjean knew God would forgive his sin — the unthinking instinct toward brutality that arose from his criminal nature — as He would show mercy to these miserable wretches who knew no better than to embrace their sins. But at the same time, he knew he was required to make reparation. 

He extended his arm and laid the glowing chisel upon his bare flesh. The agony of crackling flesh seemed to come from a great distance away. 

“Have no more fear of me than I have for you,” he announced, and cast the weapon from him. The tool disappeared through the window into the night, whirling as it flew. He bent his head in contrition. "Do what you please with me."

As the ruffians seized hold of him once more, there was heard the sound of a pistol being discharged, as if the chisel had set off a signal flare.

"What is that?" cried Brujon.

“The _cognes_ ,” said Thénardier. "Quick! The ladder! Let's leave the bacon in the mousetrap and decamp!"

Men darted towards the window to make ready with the rope ladder. Left unattended, Valjean folded to his knees in prayer. He began to shiver despite the heat from the fireplace; his coat was lying on the ground and he wrapped it around him, heedless of the burn on his arm and the wounds on his body. 

Beside the window, the gang members were quarrelling. "Not much, we must take turns! Come now, you old dog, after us!" they shouted; Thénardier responded, "We are losing time. The police are on our heels!"

"Let's draw lots to see who shall go down first!"

Thénardier exclaimed, "Are you mad! What a pack of boobies! You want to waste time, do you? Drawing lots like bourgeois pigs? With written names! Thrown into a hat!—"

"Would you like my hat?" a familiar voice remarked from the threshold.

All turned around. It was Javert.

At first Valjean had taken this for another cruel vision, torn from the heart of his secret shame. Then he realised the man himself had come, and even more shamefully his heart leapt up in his breast — in the same way it had leapt up when the young guard had come to his rescue in Toulon, as when the Inspector had come to claim him at the lottery in Montreuil. 

Frantically, Valjean choked off this surge of joy. Allowing Javert to collar him all those years ago would have destroyed him, would have left Cosette in the hands of monsters. Moreover, it would have destroyed Javert himself. 

He did not know it then, of course, but he knew it now. Knew it in the same way as he knew he had forgiven Javert, so many years ago. 

He wondered if Javert had managed to forgive _him_. 

He doubted it; the irreproachable police officer had never been one for forgiving. He remembered learning that the day Fantine was taken home to the Lord, the day when Valjean had decided to rescue Fantine's daughter. It was then that he realised he had to leave Montreuil, and the man who could not see Valjean as anything other than a criminal.

Javert barely glanced Valjean's way in the dark garret, his singular, terrible focus for once elsewhere. 

The Inspector bore down upon the ruffians like an avenging angel; he dodged projectiles and a gun's misfire; he scattered these hardened criminals, who all at once began falling over themselves to surrender to his custody.

It was over very shortly. Javert told his men, holding Brujon by the arm: "Set the prisoner at liberty. And cuff everyone else." 

A young policeman helped Valjean solicitously to his feet. Two of his colleagues were struggling to put the manacles upon one of the bigger louts, and while the youngster hastened over to assist them, Valjean saw his opportunity to escape.

A window. A single chance to flee unimpeded — and he seized it with both hands. 

  
  
  
  


Valjean shakes off the memories as he races down the length of Rue des Cornes with renewed vigour. Cosette must be frantic with worry. He has no time to spare for concern over the neighbour boy; in any case, it sounded as if the lad managed to evade capture and give the alarm. 

As Valjean rounds the corner of Rue des Vignes-Saint-Marcel, he becomes aware of the sound of boot heels on the street behind him.

Javert has not been so easily put off the scent.

Is he discovered? Does Javert know his path? How many men are with him? 

His heart hammering, Valjean hastens down the narrow passage of Rue des Vignes-Saint-Marcel and then the cobblestones of the Rue du Jardin du Roi. The doors and windows he passes are sealed shut, and there is no time to force an entry. The pounding footsteps are drawing nearer, driven by a taller man's longer strides and that man's singular, furious determination.

Valjean flees through the Jardin du Roi, and takes the sharp right turn into Rue Buffon. This wider pathway runs alongside the Jardin des Plantes. The tall iron railings that surround the sprawling gardens are mounted at the top with pointed spikes. Beyond the metal fence Valjean can make out the dark shapes of trees and botanical shrubs; in the distance are the indistinct sounds of the animals of the menagerie. 

Are the footfalls drawing closer? The railings he passes give way to a wrought-iron gate ringed with heavy chain. The gilded spikes atop this gate appear more decorative than the ones upon the fence.

Valjean does not hesitate. In his coat pocket is the sawn-off length of rope that was used to bind him. He slings the rope over one of the spikes, finds purchase for his feet in the chain, and climbs the tall gate of the Jardin des Plantes as lightly as he had once climbed the mast of a ship in Toulon’s harbour.

The spikes catch on the fabric of his coat and tear at the sole of his right boot, but they do no more damage to his body than the gang in the garret. In no time at all, he has scaled over the top of the gate and flings himself down into the gardens on the other side, panting but unharmed. 

When he straightens to his feet, there is a tall figure in the middle of Rue Buffon.

"I should have known you, Jean Valjean," Javert says grimly through the bars of the gate. "The devil, you were the most valuable of the lot. To think I almost let you slip away."

There is little of any use Valjean can say in response. He believes that, for his part, he would have known Javert even in a darkened room anywhere in the world.

He settles for, "It has been a long time." That is, at least, true. What is also true is that he has thought of Javert every day during those ten years, thought of the hopes he has once harboured, and how those hopes have been reduced to rubble.

Javert appears not to hear him. "You're a fool if you think I'd let you get away now," he mutters, eyeing the gate. 

Unlike Valjean, Javert is not armed with rope; his cane and cudgel would be of no use assisting him in his climb. Still, such minor details have never prevented Inspector Javert from arresting his man. He makes a run at the gate, attempting to find a foothold in the chain as Valjean did, but despite his height he is unable to gain purchase.

Swearing, Javert makes another attempt. He fails again. The third time, he pushes himself upwards violently and manages to grasp hold of the bar, but the spikes spear into his gloves, and he falls heavily back onto the paving stones of the Rue Buffon.

Valjean takes an involuntary step toward the gate. He knows he should have long fled — there is no telling where Javert's men are; surely Javert would not have come alone? — but he is unable to tear himself away. Instead, he watches the man’s efforts with his heart in his mouth, afraid Javert would harm himself in his attempt to undertake the impossible.

Javert groans when he picks himself up, holding onto the gate for support. Perhaps he hurt himself when he fell — twisted his leg, the way he twisted it once in the bagne, or fallen on the shoulder that he had hurt in Montreuil… 

"… Don't," Valjean says quietly, his heart pounding.

Javert pulls himself to his feet. His hat has fallen off, his carefully-bound hair is coming loose, his familiar face twisted into a furious snarl. "Don’t tell me that you care," he snarls, breathing unevenly.

"I do not wish to see you harmed." 

Javert clutches at the bars of the fence as if he could rip them apart with his hands; he looks almost angry enough to succeed. "I find that hard to believe. You cannot run from me forever."

"I will, if I have to." For Cosette, he would make any sacrifice, even if some part of him longs to surrender.

"You belong to the Law."

"That is not who I belong to." Valjean knows beyond doubt that his soul belongs to God. His body — his treacherous, sinful flesh — is a different matter altogether.

Javert makes a sharp sound; the sort of sound he might make if Thénardier's bullet had found its mark.

"Liar. You've taken hold of your own body — a criminal with no such rights, a danger to everyone around you —"

"I have been chaste for ten years since Montreuil," Valjean protests. It is the truth. He wants to tell Javert he has learned at last how dangerous a criminal’s unfettered lusts can be, has learned first-hand the need for abstinence, that no citizen has any reason to be afraid of sexual deviance on his account. "I promise you, I am no danger to anyone." 

There is only one way to convince Javert. 

He opens his coat, shivering with cold, and shows himself to Javert — the bites on his shoulder, the bruises on his bare throat, the unmistakable proof of others’ use and his own chastity displayed through the tatters of his clothes. 

Javert inhales sharply, as if he is moved by the marks the gang left upon Valjean's body; he mutters, "How did they dare lay hands on you?" His knuckles show white against the bars of the fence.

Valjean is not so easily misled. If this evidence of abuse distressed Javert, it would be due to outrage at criminals daring to aspire to a bourgeois' or officer's punishment, and not out of concern for Valjean himself. Decades ago, he was besotted enough with his young guard to conflate the two; he is innocent no longer.

“Even for them, I did not shame myself,” Valjean murmurs, stepping closer the bars. “I promise you, Paris is safe from me.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” says Javert, and steps closer in turn. 

The cane hangs at Javert’s side, but it is with the cudgel that Javert reaches through the bars. Black and shining in the moonlight, he runs it across Valjean’s throat, tracing the outline of the collar that Valjean would have worn, had they both chosen differently so many years ago. Valjean breathes out hesitantly; it would not do to make any sudden movements now that he has allowed Javert to touch him at last.

The cudgel drags lower, following the line of Valjean’s neck down to his breast. It passes almost gently over the bite and bruises, but when it encounters Valjean’s chest muscles, it slides under his torn rags, pressing in. Slowly, cruelly, the blunt tip of the police-issued weapon encircles a bare nipple already hardened by the cold.

Valjean pants hard through his mouth. He recalls how some submissives in Toulon were pierced in this place to give them more bliss, or to make this act more torturous. At this moment, he cannot tell which he is feeling, the wood rubbing possessive circles against the small, erect nub, until the tight flesh is hot and hurting beneath it.

"See, you cannot help yourself," Javert says, thickly. "You enjoy this too much."

Valjean swallows; he does not need to look down to know that his sinful nature has once again capitulated to this man's forceful handling.

Praying for strength, he says, his voice trembling, "I know my failings, Javert, you do not need to convince me. Even so, I will not spend myself until I am allowed."

Javert shakes his head. "A likely story, Jean Valjean. We will see how true that is." The cudgel moves still lower, tracing his ribs, digging against the muscles of his stomach, following the curve of his hip to the ragged front of his trousers.

Valjean cannot stop the sound torn from him as the round head of the cudgel prods greedily at the heavy sack between his thighs.

"You managed to fool me, long ago. Never again," Javert's voice is rough. The blunt instrument drags upwards, laying its claim upon the hard outline of Valjean's iniquity. By this time, Valjean's trousers are more tatters than whole cloth, and the sensation of wood against fabric and then bare skin is indescribable. 

"I never wished to mislead you," Valjean protests feebly. He tries not to rut against the wood. This is what has become of his weakness in Montreuil: it led him to aspire to the unattainable; it led Javert to set his formidable defences aside, and when that trust was broken, it drove Javert to make himself into this impossible, irreproachable icon of the Law.

He sways on his feet. Abruptly, he realises he will indeed shame himself if Javert continues to torment him so, and he presses his aching prick against the iron of the fence as if the bars are a cage.

The cold metal affords him scant relief. His tender flesh is swollen and sore under his clothes; he cannot escape the pressure of the bludgeon that bears down upon him mercilessly. He grinds himself against the iron, gasping, feeling dampness well in his eyes for the first time during this harrowing night.

Javert’s mouth falls open and then he has pressed himself up against the bars as well. Valjean can feel the frantic beating of the man’s heart against his own breast.

“You pretend,” Javert mutters, “you have always pretended, for all the good it will do you. You let me have you in Montreuil, you said you were mine, but all these things were false.” 

His free hand grasps the front of Valjean’s tattered shirt and pulls him even closer against the bars, against Javert’s heaving body. The cudgel is trapped between them. Valjean sees the contact flare in Javert’s eyes; knows the man feels what he feels: hard wood rubbing against equally erect flesh.

Javert groans as his hips begin to rock as if of their own accord. He says, “In truth what you wished, what you now wish, is to spend yourself like a common criminal, unable to control yourself —”

"No," Valjean whispers. His prick feels raw and debased and desperate, caged behind the bars of the gate as though shackled within Toulon's iron restraints, Javert using his bludgeon upon its length as he would bait a beast in the enclosures of the menagerie. He can feel the intense arousal gather heavily in his groin, and he has to close his eyes against tears that he has not shed in the garret, and indeed had not shed in the last decade. 

He has forgiven Javert. He will be equal to his sinful nature. He would not finish unless he was allowed. He would serve as long as he needed to, to show that he was no danger to any man or woman in Paris. 

"Not like that," he says, unsteady in every limb. "With God's grace, I can still keep hold of myself." 

Javert shudders like a caged animal. When Valjean opens his eyes he can see the brow slick with sweat, the grey-streaked hair that has come loose upon his shoulders, the tall figure clenched upon itself in a rictus of unmistakable lust. He grunts, "You think you have the strength to hold on to yourself? When you should by all rights belong to me?"

Valjean fights back the urge to weep bitterly, to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness, to yield to the temporary relief of completion. His abused body has been tormented to the brink of itself, has now roused itself to passion and pain, and is defenceless before this final onslaught of desire.

After a moment teetering upon the edge of the abyss, somehow he manages to prevail — he is no longer just a common criminal, but a man able to withstand his own corrupt nature — prevailing as fortitude prevails over flesh, as the mind prevails over the body, as soul prevails over sin. 

The sweet pleasure of self-denial pierces him, as sharp as the spikes of the gate that separates them.

"You see? _You_ are safe from me," Valjean tells him, and this proves to be Javert's undoing. The fist in his blouse tightens, Javert makes a choking noise, and the Inspector is seized with a violent spasm that makes him drop his weapon and cry out with helpless release.

When he is finished, he unclenches his fist and falls to his knees, as if his limbs are no longer able to hold him up.

Valjean takes a step backwards, and then another. Javert remains crumpled upon the stones; he does not even have the strength to raise his head.

"Forgive me," he tells the man he has wronged, who has wronged him in turn. He is bound to Javert; he has been bound to Javert since Toulon, since Montreuil — but there are others who have a prior claim upon him: Myriel; Fantine; his beloved Cosette, who has no one else to defend her. As long as he is needed, he cannot bend his head to Javert in the manner the ancient regime dictates. 

He has miles and years to go before he can rest at last. For Cosette's sake, he has to keep running.

He gathers his exhausted body to take flight. Before he turns and makes for the nearest line of trees, he takes in this last image: Javert in the moonlight, kneeling, as if their roles are reversed — as if Javert were the fugitive before the Law, a prisoner submitting to the rightful collar of his master. 

Javert does not look up, and Valjean tears himself away.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by Prinzenhasserin and Groucha!


End file.
